A'22 speaker Lori Ferris, AIA talks climate justice, embodied carbon

{"version":"0.3.0","atoms":[],"cards":[],"markups":[["strong"],["a",["href","https:\/\/www.goodyclancy.com\/","target","_new"]]],"sections":[[1,"p",[[0,[],0,"Lori Ferris, AIA, a 2022 recipient of the Young Architects Award talks with AIA about sustainability in the field. "]]],[1,"p",[[0,[0],0,"First off, can you tell me a bit about your role at "],[0,[1],1,"Goody Clancy"],[0,[],1,"? "],[0,[],0," I\u2019m the director of sustainability and climate action. I consider the role to be three-pronged. One is project-based; so working with our project teams on early goal-setting and working with clients to achieve their sustainability vision. The second piece is internal strategic planning around sustainability: working with the president and other members of the company to develop a framework, including internal resources and training, to really elevate our sustainable design practice. The third piece is outward-facing through my work with the Climate Heritage Network and a number of other organizations \u2013 sharing out our expertise and also learning from other groups and doing a lot of advocacy. "]]],[1,"p",[[0,[0],1,"You have a particular focus on educational institutions who are renewing their heritage campuses. Can you tell me about that?"],[0,[],0," Goody Clancy is primarily an education design firm. Most of our work is with higher education institutions. It\u2019s a really great client group to do sustainability work with because I think educational institutions are really on the forefront in terms of developing policies and practices, and really implementing sustainability in buildings while also bringing in their own educational values. Since they have a lot of buildings, it also gives you the chance to really evaluate the impact of the built environment on a portfolio scale. "]]],[1,"p",[[0,[0],1,"One of the things you addressed on the panel that you participated in at A\u201922 was how climate action and climate justice are being defined and addressed in daily practice. How does your experience speak to that? "],[0,[],0," We [architects] are really starting to be good at climate action. Even if we don\u2019t always implement as much as we could on our projects, we really understand how to design for decarbonization and how to think about resilience and designing for the future climate. I think the climate justice piece is where we\u2019re really just starting. We can\u2019t think of [climate action and climate justice] as separate anymore. We don\u2019t have that luxury because they\u2019re really integrated with each other. As we pursue sustainable design, it\u2019s about understanding where we might be having unintended negative consequences on people, from the supply chain all the way back to people who live near materials extraction or manufacturing plants to the people directly in the building or across the street from the building. At the same time, how can we provide climate action solutions that support frontline communities? Understanding that our work is building by building, what are the opportunities we can leverage both within the way we work as architects, specifying materials and designing as part of communities, but then also as advocates and educators and liaisons?"]]],[1,"p",[[0,[0],1,"You wrote an article for ArchitectureBoston on embodied carbon. How much work do you think remains to educate architects on how they can be more mindful of the embodied carbon aspects of their designs? "],[0,[],0," I think we\u2019re making a lot of progress, frankly. I think three to four years ago, most architects didn\u2019t know what embodied carbon was and had never paid attention to that concept before. I think in terms of spreading literacy, we\u2019ve come pretty far in the fact that it [embodied carbon] has made its way into LEED and other rating systems. I think we still have a long way to go in terms of designing to reduce embodied carbon. Part of that has to do with working with manufacturers and really continuing to put pressure on industry \u2013 we don\u2019t make the materials, we just specify them. We can specify performance criteria around embodied carbon, but we need that supply to meet the demand. At the same time, I think the tools are getting a lot better. They are proliferating in terms of full life cycle assessment tools like Tally, but also early tools like Epic, which allows architect to start to think about it early on in design, which is when you can make the biggest improvements. I think the next step is to start to think about it as total carbon, rather than embodied carbon and operational carbon. Particularly when we think about the time value of carbon, it really matters when those emissions happen. So understanding that upfront thinking and financial sense \u2013 what is the upfront cost of carbon that you then have to pay back over time through operational efficiency? That\u2019s the next jump we need to make in the way we think about it. "]]]]}